SCORE Act Guarantees Athlete NIL Rights, Caps Agent Fees, and Gives College Sports Antitrust Immunity

The Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act, or SCORE Act, is a massive federal overhaul of college sports, establishing a national rulebook for Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals and setting new minimum standards for athlete support. This bill guarantees student athletes the right to profit from their NIL without losing their eligibility, while simultaneously creating a federal regulatory framework that shields the major athletic associations from antitrust lawsuits when they enforce the new rules.

The NIL Green Light (With Fine Print)

For the student athlete, the biggest win is the guaranteed right to sign endorsement and sponsorship deals using their NIL (Sec. 3). No school, conference, or national association can stop them. However, this isn't a free-for-all. Schools can still veto deals if they conflict with an existing school contract or violate the school's code of conduct. If a deal is worth more than $600, the contract must be in writing and include a crucial escape clause allowing the athlete to cancel the agreement six months after they leave college, regardless of what the contract says (Sec. 3).

To protect athletes from getting fleeced, the bill caps agent fees at 5 percent of the athlete's earnings from an endorsement contract (Sec. 4). It also mandates that agents must disclose whether they are registered with the governing athletic association. If they aren't registered, the athlete must give written consent after disclosure. This is huge for a young person signing their first contract—it puts a hard limit on how much the middleman can take.

The Cost of a Highly Paid Coach

The SCORE Act imposes significant new burdens on universities where any varsity coach earns over $250,000 annually (Sec. 5). If your school pays its coaches big money, it now has to provide comprehensive support to its athletes. This includes mandatory life skills training covering mental health, financial literacy (like taxes), career prep, and NIL rights. More critically, the school must guarantee medical coverage for sports-related injuries while the athlete is enrolled and for at least three years after they graduate or leave the school.

Furthermore, scholarships (grants-in-aid) at these schools are now protected: they cannot be revoked due to athletic performance, injury, or if the athlete makes money from an NIL deal (Sec. 5). The school must also fund a degree completion program for former scholarship athletes who left without graduating, offering financial aid based on their previous scholarship amount. For the athlete, this is a massive safety net, ensuring a career-ending injury doesn't also end their education or leave them with huge medical bills.

The Antitrust Shield and the Employment Question

Here’s where things get complicated. The bill grants the interstate athletic associations (like the NCAA) the authority to set rules on eligibility, recruiting, and even a cap on total NIL spending—which must be at least 22 percent of the average sports revenue of the top 70 earning schools (Sec. 6). The kicker is Section 7, which gives broad antitrust immunity: anyone who adopts or enforces these Section 6 rules is protected from federal and state antitrust lawsuits. Essentially, the bill dictates the rules of the road and then hands the keys to the associations, shielding them from competition challenges.

Crucially, the bill explicitly states that a student athlete is not an employee of the school, conference, or association simply because they participate in a varsity sport (Sec. 8). This overrides any state or federal law that might try to classify them as employees based on their athletic participation alone. This provision shuts down the possibility of collective bargaining or minimum wage protections for athletes under existing labor laws.

Financial Transparency and State Preemption

Starting July 1, 2026, colleges must publicly disclose exactly how student athletic fees are spent, including the percentage of sports costs covered by those fees (Sec. 9). Even more impactful: if a school earns $50 million or more in media rights revenue annually, it is banned from using student athletic fees to support its sports programs the following year. This is a direct hit to high-revenue schools, forcing them to find other funding sources for their massive athletic budgets.

Finally, the SCORE Act includes a broad preemption clause (Sec. 10), meaning this federal law overrides any state or local law that attempts to regulate athlete pay, benefits, employment status, or eligibility rules. While this creates a single national standard, it also eliminates existing state-level laws that might have provided stronger consumer or labor protections for athletes, concentrating regulatory power at the federal level and within the athletic associations themselves.